The present invention relates generally to system and method for the verification of authenticity of goods or the payment of excise taxes associated therewith. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method of securing one or more product indicia for use in authenticating products or collecting a tax.
Many types of mass produced products have various taxes such as excise taxes which are levied on the product at either the federal level, the state level, or both. For example, cigarettes are subject to varying levels of taxation in different states across the United States. Consequently, tax stamps, which are applied to the cigarettes and indicate that the appropriate tax has been paid, are not applied to the products at the manufacturer or product origination site. Instead, the manufacturer ships the products to the various wholesalers who then buy tax stamps associated with the federal and/or unique state tax and apply the tax stamps to the product. The cost associated with the tax is then passed on to the retailers and ultimately to the consumers.
Because the tax associated with some products such as cigarettes is extremely high, there is an incentive for fraudulent activities to occur; for example, an individual may steal a large quantity of valid tax stamps, or duplicate valid tax stamps. Clearly, in such circumstances, a dishonest individual or individuals can apply stolen or duplicate tax stamps to the goods without paying taxes and either charge retailers the full price, thereby pocketing the entire profit associated with the tax, or split the xe2x80x9clost taxxe2x80x9d profits with unscrupulous retailers. Consequently, various methods and systems have been developed to thwart such illegal activities.
Once such methodology which has been developed to minimize counterfeiting is public key cryptography. Public key cryptography is a common protocol which is used to provide the authenticity of a message and involves encrypting a message or code with a private key portion of a public-private key pair. The corresponding public key portion is then provided to the party who generally will use it to decrypt the message or code back to its original form (typically a plain text message or code). Therefore, so long as the sender of the message or code keeps the private key secret, anyone decrypting the message or code is certain the message or code came from the sender if the plain text message or code is successfully reconstructed.
In the cigarette tax stamp example, the public key cryptography protocol is used to authenticate the tax stamp on the cigarettes in the following way, as illustrated in prior art FIG. 1. In one example, cigarettes 10 are manufactured at a manufacturer""s site 12 without the application of a tax stamp because each wholesaler location may have different excise tax requirements. The cigarettes 10 are then shipped to a wholesale site 14, at which point a tax stamp 16 is applied to the cigarettes 10 in the form of a digital signature. The digital signature typically is an encrypted code or message and is unique; that is, each digital signature is one-of-a-kind and no duplicates are made.
The cigarettes 10 are then sold and distributed to various retailers 18 for the ultimate sale to consumers. Aperson who makes use of the tax stamp 16 on the cigarettes 10, for example, a tax inspector, travels to various retail sites 18 and inspects the digital signatures 16 with a reading device 20, such as a bar code reader, etc. The tax inspector inspects the tax stamp 16, for example, by decrypting it using the associated public key in order to ascertain its origin. Further inspection of other similarly marked products provides a check for uniqueness. Therefore the inspector checks to see that the digital signature 16 is a valid code and that the code has not been used previously (i.e., is not a counterfeit).
Although the above-described public key cryptography system and method is reliable and modestly effective, it is always desirable to further improve such systems and methods.
The present invention relates to a system and method of securing authentication or tax collection indicia for various goods at an indicia application location such as a wholesale distribution site. The indicia preferably reside in a file and are secured by employing encryption technology to the indicia and by further encrypting a private encryption key used to decrypt such indicia at an indicia application location. The encrypted private key is decrypted at the indicia application location with a code-protected key that can not be deciphered or otherwise read and thus serves to protect the indicia from theft, tampering or duplication. Upon decrypting the private encryption key with the code-protected key, the private encryption key is used to decrypt the encrypted indicia, which are then applied to the goods.
The present invention further includes employing an encrypted logfile at the indicia application location. The logfile preferably includes use information which indicates the names of various indicia files which have been processed at the indicia application location and/or the times at which such processing occurred. The logfile also preferably includes at least one indicia from each of the previously processed indicia files. The encrypted logfile is decrypted at the indicia application location with a private encryption key and used to evaluate the integrity of the indicia file. The integrity is checked, for example, by determining whether the indicia file contains duplicate product indicia by comparing the decrypted product indicia file to the list of indicia from previously processed files. If a match is found then at least some of the indicia within the file are not unique and evidence of misuse, tampering or theft has been identified.
The present invention also includes improved security of the authentication or tax collection indicia in the indicia application process. Upon decryption of the indicia file, one or more indicia are applied to the various goods, for example, via printing. After each indicia is printed, the memory location within the indicia file at which the printed indicia resided is overwritten with other data such as a null data set to effectively xe2x80x9cdestroyxe2x80x9d all indicia after they have been used. In addition, upon the discontinuation of printing when the file has not been completely utilized. (the file still contains unused indicia), the remaining indicia are re-encrypted and stored to maintain the security thereof.
According to one aspect of the present invention a method of securing one or more product indicia for use in authenticating products or collecting a tax is disclosed. The method includes generating one or more product indicia and encrypting the one or more product indicia with a public encryption key to form an encrypted indicia file. Subsequently, the indicia file is transferred to an indicia application location for application of the one or more product indicia to one or more products, respectively. The product indicia are processed securely while applying the one or more product indicia to the one or more products, thereby preventing a tampering, misuse or theft of one or more product indicia at the indicia application location.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, the product indicia are processed securely by decrypting an encrypted private key associated with the encrypted indicia using a code-protected key at the indicia application location. The product indicia are then decrypted using the private key and are applied to the one or more products, respectively.
According to another aspect of the present invention, a system for securing one or more product indicia for use in authentication of products or collecting a tax is disclosed. The system includes a processor and a read/write memory associated with the processor. The read/write memory stores therein a product indicia file in an encrypted form which contains one or more product indicia. The read/write memory also includes a private key file which contains a private: encryption key in an encrypted form. The encrypted private encryption key is associated with a public encryption key used to encrypt the product indicia in the product indicia file.
The system also includes a code-protected hardware encryption key and dedicated processor associated with the processor. The code-protected hardware encryption key and dedicated processor stores therein a code-protected encryption key which is used to encrypt and decrypt the private encryption key in the read/write memory. The code-protected encryption key cannot be deciphered, read or otherwise reverse-engineered without rendering the code-protected memory inoperable.
A printing device is also associated with the processor. The processor is configured to utilize the code-protected encryption key to decrypt the private encryption key and use the decrypted private encryption key to decrypt the one or more product indicia in the product indicia file and the logfile. The processor is further configured to transfer the decrypted one or more product indicia to the printing device for printing thereof. In the above manner, the system effectuates a secure transfer of the product indicia to the goods without a threat of misuse, tampering or theft.
To the accomplishment of the foregoing and related ends, the invention comprises the features hereinafter fully described and particularly pointed out in the claims. The following description and drawings set forth in detail certain illustrative embodiments of the invention. These embodiments are indicative, however, of merely a few of the various ways in which the principles of the invention may be employed. Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the drawings.